


Remaking is a talent

by M_Moonshade



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Mild Gore, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-13
Updated: 2014-10-13
Packaged: 2018-02-20 08:56:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2422784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_Moonshade/pseuds/M_Moonshade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For every time Castiel swoops in to save Sam and Dean, there are a dozen more when he arrives too late.</p><p>At times like these, it's his job to put restore them back to the way they were. He's very good at it by now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remaking is a talent

There are things Sam and Dean Winchester don’t know. Things Castiel keeps from them, not because he is kept unaware himself, nor because he has his orders, but because knowing would harm them. Would damage their opinion of him.

Dean’s opinion of him, at least. He suspects any warm feelings Sam Winchester had for him dissolved when Castiel shattered his ill-conceived notions of angels full of mercy and love. He still respects Castiel, but it is the same respect he might harbor for a gun, a poisonous snake, a black hole. His elder brother still harbors affection for the angel, veiled in jabs and sarcasm. Castiel would never willingly say as much to his superiors, but he treasures that confused, messy bond they share.

Which is why Dean will never know about moments like these.

Sam lays crumpled on the floor, his throat slit so deep that the cervical bones flash white under the cut. His lifeblood is spilled around him, the intense red harsh in contrast to his ashen skin. It soaks into his clothes, his hair. His eyes are already starting to cloud with death.

Dean lays slumped over a few feet away. Stabs, gouges and bullet wounds perforate his skin, shredding his clothes. This time his brother was the first to fall, and Dean flew into a rage, defending his brother’s cooling corpse from the demons. More than a dozen fell before he succumbed to his own injuries, too mangled for even adrenaline to keep him going. Castiel arrived on the scene not long after, and finished what demons remained.

It’s another secret that he keeps from Dean: that for every time Castiel swoops in to save him, there are a dozen more when he’s a few moments too late. They are marked, wanted by demons and humans alike, and nothing short of constant surveillance could keep them safe from it all. And even if the garrison tried (they did), the Winchesters would find a way to slip away (they have) and get themselves killed once again (Dean ripped to shreds by a Wendigo, Sam immolated in the act of destroying the beast). It’s been determined far more efficient to simply earmark their souls for Heaven and return them to their bodies once the proper arrangements have been made. And of course, those arrangements are left to Castiel.

He gathers the bodies of their enemies and deposits them in the Arctic Circle, where they will provide a rare feast for the creatures there. The rest he rearranges, smooths away the bullet holes, wipes away the gore, leaving behind only the grime and dirt and the human abuses more typical to a warehouse. He learned early on not to leave anything too clean—next to Godliness clean, Dean put it, right before he and Sam set off investigating what could have reason to hide its trail so thoroughly. Castiel had only narrowly managed to put them on the scent of a vampire nest and throw their suspicions away from himself.

Satisfied with his work, he kneels beside the empty vessels, and lays his hands on Sam. Always Sam first. Always. Once he resurrected Dean too early, thinking shock and exhaustion would keep him unconscious. Yet within seconds of his first desperate gasp, Dean was at his brother’s side, cradling him in his arms, shouting and ranting and commanding, yet unwilling to let Castiel close enough to touch him. The memory still makes the angel shudder—the panic in Dean’s eyes. The grief in his face. The way his hands shook as he smoothed Sam’s blood-matted hair.

Now he heals Sam before Dean. Now he restores both of their vessels before returning the souls to nestle inside.

If pressed, Castiel, will admit a twinge of pride when it comes to healing them. He has honed it to an art form. An amateur might simply restore them entirely, cleanse them of every injury, but humans value their scars and deformities as much as they do their perfections—perhaps more. Suddenly losing an old scar alarms them. Even if Castiel confesses to healing the injury, Dean is bound to complain for weeks about having to wear his hands back into the calluses he’s so proud of. Now Castiel is more careful. He closes the wounds of only the most recent battles, wipes away the bruises. He’ll leave some superficial injuries, if he intends them to retain a partial memory of the attack. In this case, it isn’t necessary, and so he mends the wounds entirely, infusing Dean’s fresh skin with scar tissue from previous conflicts.

He goes deeper: restoring gray matter damaged by a recent concussion. Unblocking arteries clogged by Dean’s abhorrent diet. Mending the fledgling damage to his liver. In Sam he picks out the beginnings of arthritis in his knees, the consequence of a body weighed down with so much muscle and put through constant abuse. In his left lung sits a cluster of cells no larger than a speck of dust, dividing with cancer—a twitch of his Grace, and the offending cells are wiped from existence. Broken bones, long since healed, are restored to their former strength, devoid of scar tissue. In both of them he restores the tattoos that ward against possession, darkening the ink where it’s starting to fade, adding layers of his own protections just below the mark.

He wipes away the blood and grime and sweat, leaves the dirt under the fingernails and behind the ears, leaves oil and dust in the hair.

With a touch to each of the brothers, he transports them and their belongings back into their hotel room. Replaces their things in their usual places: Sam’s neatly arranged in his duffel, Dean’s strewn with a haphazard organization that Castiel has only recently learned to recognize. He lays his hands on Sam once more, willing his mind to sleep in the same instant that he returns the wayward soul into its body, gently erasing all memories of hunting the demons, of dying, of Heaven. And then he steps over Dean’s bed.

The hunter is dead. There is no pulse under his skin, no color in his face, no breath in his lungs. But his face is arranged in a look of serenity, soft and free of tension. For the moment, Dean Winchester is in Paradise, free of torment and grief and responsibility. He is happy. He is at peace.

And as Castiel pulls his soul from Heaven and cradles it in his hands, he wishes once again that he didn’t have to bring Dean back into this world—not just yet. His charge is tired, and the angel wishes he could let him rest just a little while longer.

With one final exhale, he pours the soul back into its vessel. Like his brother, Castiel sends him to sleep. But his hand hesitates as it wipes away the last of the memories, leaving behind the faintest outlines in his wake: Happiness. Comfort. Peace. Joy. Belonging. Family.

They will be close to nothing by the time he wakes. Only feelings and impressions. Nothing more than last wisps of a dream.

But for a few short minutes, on one small morning, Dean Winchester will have peace.


End file.
